Faïza Guène is a French writer and film director, born to Algerian parents in 1985. She wrote her first novel, Kiffe Kiffe demain (published in English as Just Like Tomorrow), when she was 17 years old. It was a huge success in France, and has been translated throughout the world. Guène’s work breaks out of the Francophone ghetto to offer a remarkable dialogue between the disenfranchised banlieues and ‘metropolitan’ France. Rooted in disarming observational comedy, her novels give voice both to the Arabic-influenced backslang (verlan) spoken by young immigrants and the ‘straight’ French of her education, in a creative mix skilfully rendered by her translator and co-speaker, Sarah Ardizzone. Dubbed ‘the Sagan of the suburbs’, Guène develops her political concerns, comic flair and linguistic inventiveness in her second book Dreams from the Endz (Vintage).

All tickets £8 per event, available online or by calling +44 (0)20 7209 1141.

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Supported by:

* The British Museum
* Arts Council England
* The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize